Can You See the Future Church? Reformation Sunday, October 31, 2021

This was my Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) sermon for my Introduction to Preaching class at LSTC. This is the only one of the four sermons that I actually was able to preach in real life, at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Reformation Sunday, October 31, 2021.

Grace and Peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.

In our Hebrew Bible scripture today, Jeremiah 31:31-34, we hear Jeremiah’s foretelling of the new covenant, a promise God gave to God’s people.

Let’s let those last two verses resound in our heads and hearts one more time:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Most Lutheran churches use these words from Jeremiah as the good news every last Sunday in October. This day. Reformation Day. The day we commemorate our identity as God’s people, not by anything we do, but because of what God does and who God is. God’s grace is wide enough, Christ’s love strong enough to reconnect us with God, messed up people we are. That’s the truth. The truth that sets us free, as we hear echoed in today’s texts from Romans and John.

That’s good news today. Today and every day. I could sit down now. But as seminary pulls me onward, and my time in this place draws shorter, I would be remiss in wasting this opportunity to fill you with encouragement and challenge as God’s people, called to share the good news.

The Church always has been in correction mode, starting with that first Pentecost 50 days past Resurrection Sunday. The Holy Spirit ignited the believers, and what had been a small handful of disciples of Jesus of Nazareth grew by thousands from all sorts of places. The Way no longer was a secret group hiding in homes around Jerusalem and Galilee, but a Spirit-led wildfire of new believers throughout the nations. Recovering from that early morning Spirit-tossing, Peter preached to those who were watching and wondering, and encouraged them to be baptized in the name of Jesus the Christ and receive the Holy Spirit.

I imagine Peter looking out over the crowd, asking his fellow disciples: “Can you see the future church?”

The Reformation was a course correction for the Church, a movement away from being pronounced in good standing with God by what we could do, to restoration with God by grace through faith. As Lutherans, we think of Martin Luther, priest and university professor, and his criticisms, his 95 Theses, as the spark for the Reformation 504 years ago today. Basically, his 95 Theses were the 1517 version of a viral Facebook post. Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, copies of Luther’s discourse rejecting the Church’s selling forgiveness of sin and reduced time in Purgatory were circulated widely. They spurred other theologians, such as Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, to speak boldly their own criticisms of the Church, and provoked opposing viewpoints. Within the next few years, the seeds of disillusionment were being sown throughout Europe, birthing the Protest, or Protestant movement.

I think of Martin Luther, on October 31, 1517, holding his 95 Theses that represented his love for the Church and his misgivings for its direction, saying “Can you see the future church?”

But our always reforming Church didn’t stop there. The Spirit blew the passion for the gospel on the four winds, and the Church took root around the globe. Here in the United States, Europeans seeking religious freedom landed on these shores. While we know the Church has its share of appalling, inexcusable history – the colonization of indigenous people, infighting and schisms, intolerance for other faiths, and rejection of ever so many people God calls Beloved – it also has moments of grace. Congregations became the centers of community life, and its people asked for forgiveness for being a part of the problem, rather than caring for all those Jesus loves.

•     Moments like church leaders marching in the Civil Rights events of the 1960s.
• Moments like the first ordinations of Lutheran women pastors in 1970.
• Moments like the Church asking for peace in the Middle East and an end to the war in Vietnam.

And that historic meeting in spring 1987, when members of three American Lutheran bodies met in the Constituting Convention to reverse the torn fabric of the Body of Christ, to bring to life a new unified Lutheran church, which became the ELCA on Jan. 1, 1988.

I can see the ELCA’s first Presiding Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, elected during that meeting, looking out over the people gathered in Columbus, Ohio, declaring “Can you see the future church?”

And the Spirit continued to blow the good news of God’s love and grace across the country: across the plains, over the mountains, into the valleys. Some of that Spirit drifted westward with new settlers to a quickly growing town, Prescott Valley, in the ranching valley between the Bradshaw and Mingus ranges. The Spirit blew them together some 30 years ago, first in a funeral home, then in the elementary school gym. Finally, on March 2, 2003, the Spirit settled them into this modest space, where they could worship and be equipped to go out and keep spreading the good news.

I can imagine Kirk Anderson looking over those of you gathered that day, ready to continue the adventure, saying “Can you see the future church?”

And the story only begins there. The baptisms, the confirmations, the weddings, the new member gatherings. Our commitment to growing benevolence funding for the larger Church, and outreach to local organizations that serve the least, the last, the lost, and the little. Our first God’s Work, Our Hands events, and all the ones since. The Congregational Meeting in January 2017, when we voted to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, welcoming everyone, especially people of every sexual orientation and gender identity. Our studies of racial justice. That weekend during the global pandemic, no less, when we moved forward to make worship accessible to anyone, everywhere, via livestream. 

So many moments of change, of reformation. Hard work. Difficult decisions. And so many moments still to come for this family of God in Christ. Paths we will take. And the paths we won’t.

I can see the president of the congregation at Emmanuel’s 50^th anniversary celebration in 2042 – you know, that’s not so far away anymore – speaking words of anticipation toward the next 50 years: “Can you see the future church?”

Reformation Sunday. A day to commemorate and remind ourselves that the Church is always changing, always adapting, leaving some things behind, and finding other ways to live out God’s love in a world that so desperately needs it. A chance to reboot and know that the Spirit is working now to help reform the Church for those future days. And Jeremiah’s words foretelling God’s covenant still are so appropriate as we live into that future. Listen to those words, brought up to date for 2021

The time is drawing near when I’ll work with believers in a whole new way. It won’t be like I did in Israel, when I led the children of Israel out of Egypt by pillars of fire and pillars of smoke, allowing them to wander in the wilderness for a long time until they were ready for the land of promise. It won’t be like the church after Pentecost, people who kept fighting about the right way to be Christ followers. And it won’t be the way of Christians of today, meeting in buildings to praise me on Sunday, then acting indifferent to Love the other six days.

This is the brand-new promise that is rising up – the truth. I did not intend to create a religion – I came to bring the truth: live peaceably, show compassion to one another, care for the earth and its living creatures. You don’t need that written on stone tablets or sacred books – it’s in your heart, your very DNA. You know love because you are loved, cradle Lutherans and people who walked in the door this week, those who can define all those big churchy words, and those who really don’t care. My grace covers you all, every beautiful and broken piece. Grab onto that truth, my kids, and hold on tight. We’re in for some wild times. Are you with me?

Or to put it another way: “Can you see the future church?”

Amen.

Free Indeed, Reformation Sunday, October 29, 2017

Reformation Sunday (Year A)

Sunday, October 29, 2017

From Paul’s declaration that we have all been justified by grace to Luther’s hammering his theses against the Wittenburg Church door to remind us that grace reigns supreme, the whole darn Reformation-thing was intended to tell us that, in the end, we don’t need to do anything, earn anything, say anything, accomplish anything, or buy anything to earn God’s love. That we already have it, and that most of the Church’s problems – and, indeed, the world’s problems – start when we forget we already have love and worth and dignity as a gift from God and try to earn it or take it from someone else. It’s about freedom.

– David Lose, senior pastor

Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church, Minneapolis

Theme:  Free Indeed

Reflection:  It was 1976, and all around me, the world suddenly had turned red, white and blue.

For this bicentennial year, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to celebrate our independence in a grand way, every town, every school, every organization was pulling out the stops to do something big. I remember a major patriotic program at the end of my school year, going to meet the Bicentennial wagon train that was traveling across the country, saving bicentennial quarters, a fabulous Fourth of July parade, people reenacting historical events, and fireworks everywhere.

I was 13. Celebrating a huge anniversary of our country’s freedom was cool – but I admit it wasn’t much more than a year-long event.

And this week, we come to the end of another year-long event. Tuesday, Oct. 31, we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. It’s been a year-long commemoration of events that started the Protestant Reformation and the Lutheran denomination.

A year’s worth of looking back – to healing the divisions in Christ’s church that Reformation caused, to the truths that Martin Luther got right, and to the heart of the reform tradition that ensures we always have been, are, and will be a church of change.
 

The language of our Bibles: no longer Greek or Hebrew, but German, English and 630+ other languages, including Braille and audiobooks. People worship the living God in German, English, Spanish, Swahili, Navajo, American Sign Language, and thousands of other languages.

We praise the Lord in dance and music, skits and visual arts. We join in healing prayer, beer and hymns events, Taize services and drum circles. We gather in small chapels and huge auditoriums, school gymnasiums and cathedrals, and in homes, parks and stadiums. We open hymnals and worship folders, speak words from the heart and recite and sing words projected on huge screens. Our worship leader may be in the middle of a circle of chairs or shared via web conference.

Worshiping in a cathedral doesn’t make worship more correct than praising God among pine trees on a retreat. Praising God out of a hymnal is no more sacred than the somewhat memorized, often misquoted lines in a children’s Christmas program. Paul wrote to churches in Rome, God will justify no one by deeds, but through God’s grace by faith.

And the truth is that God wants nothing more for us than this country’s founders wanted for their people: freedom. Freedom from living enslaved in our sin, freedom from the impossible chore of measuring up, freedom from being excluded or excluding others. In short, as Jesus told his disciples, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

So, we’ve commemorated a year of looking back with fondness to reformers like Martin Luther, who would not stand for less than this freedom. We’ve celebrated the joyous freedom we have in all the ways of word and worship. We’ve given a nod to people who have given everything for our freedom to worship as we choose.

Now, God’s people have done enough looking back. Time to look forward in hope, in anticipation, in wonder at the next new thing God is doing. What will the Church look like 500 years from now?  With our mighty God as our fortress, our ever-present help in times of trouble, where are we called to serve and what are we called to accomplish now that we are set free in Christ?

(You always are welcome to respond with your thoughts and reflections in the comments section at the bottom of this post.) 

Faith App:  Speak God’s truth this week. Speak words of love and acceptance to a child struggling with school, service to a co-worker with job or family stress, or compassion to a neighbor with health issues. Let the Spirit use you to set someone free.

HYMN/SONG SUGGESTIONS

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, ELW 503/504/505

Salvation Unto Us Has Come, ELW 590

Baptized and Set Free, ELW 453

For by Grace You Have Been Saved, ELW 598

Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word, ELW 517

I Come With Joy, ELW 482

God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage, ELW 509

Built on a Rock, ELW 652

Christ Has Set Me Free, Rend Collective Experiment

Strong Tower, Kutless

No Longer Slaves, Bethel Music

I Am Free, Newsboys

Chainbreaker, Zach Williams

Redeemed, Big Daddy Weave

LESSONS

Jeremiah 31:31-34 I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Psalm 46 God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble.

Romans 3:19-28 For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

John 8:31-36 You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Summary:  Reformation Sunday is like the Fourth of July to Americans, a day to commemorate the freedom we cherish in Christ, by word alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.

OPENING LITANY based on Psalm 46

L:  God is our refuge, a strong tower to protect us,

C:  Sheltering us when our worlds come crashing in.

L:  The earth can shake, foundations become unsettled,

C:  Leaving us clutching the covenant words God keeps.

L:  “I am with you,” says our God, the Lord of hosts.

C:  The steadfast, timeless One to whom we can turn.

L:  Pleasant waters flow through God’s holy community,

C:  Where God lives we are safe, unscathed in the morning,

L:  Again and again, the news terrorizes us, says evil is rife,

C:  God-Is-With-Us is the mighty fortress in whom we trust.

L:  Come and see how God handles the mess we’ve made,

C:  Snapping our spears like matchsticks to bring peace.

L:  Be quiet and present, watching our Lord at work,

C:  Respected from the beginning to the end of time.

L:  “I am with you,” says our God, the Lord of hosts.

C:  The steadfast, timeless One to whom we can turn.

CONFESSION

L:  Lord, we confess it sounds too good to be true –

C:  Your generous grace, offered free of charge!

L:  We want to turn it into something we earned,

C:  Boast that we deserve it more than other folks.

L:  How we wield freedom’s shield like a spear,

C:  Convincing people forgiveness comes with an “if,”

L:  That God’s rescue won’t cover all their wrongs –

C:  Shaking our heads that they’ve fallen short again.

L:  Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, Jesus said.

C:  Not us – in our regular worship seats each Sunday,

L:  Not us – who work tirelessly in our ministries.

C:  Like your disciples, we’ve never been enslaved.

(Silent reflection)

L:  In our confession, we pray together,

C:  Most Merciful God … how we like to edit your promises, back in Luther’s day to today. We attach a cost to what you’ve provided out of love for us; we insert an “if-then” clause into your gift of grace. Forgive us, Lord, for enslaving ourselves and others with our misguided understanding that the works we do can earn your forgiveness.

P:  Hear this Good News: Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Stay in God’s word. Stay free from those who would tell you to change your ways, work harder, or give more generously to earn a place in the family of faith. Children of God, you are forgiven and set free by God’s grace alone through your faith in Christ Jesus.  

In the name of…

C:  Amen

PRAYER OF THE DAY

L:  We pray together, 

C:  God of Freedom … we pray that you would deliver us from ourselves – our fearful, legalistic minds that won’t accept we truly are your beloved children, and our enslaved, judgmental hearts that create barriers to keep others away from the gift of grace. Keep reminding us of this truth, that through the life, death and resurrection of your son, we are free indeed. Amen.

COMMUNION BLESSING

L:  We pray together,

C:  We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the grains of faith in this bread, the free gift of grace in this cup, the covenant we break, but you keep, again and again.  Send us into this world, sharing your compassion, living your love, until the whole world is set free.  Amen.

SENDING

L:  By word alone, we know God’s truth,

C:  By the Spirit we have come to faith,

L:  And by grace alone God rescues us.

C:  Our good works reflect God’s love for us.

L: Go now, free indeed, to love and to serve the Lord.

C: Thanks be to God!

First Reading Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: Jeremiah’s laments are well-known. But as the children of Israel prepare to be sent to Babylon in exile, Jeremiah receives and explains his vision of a future bright with hope, because of God’s promises..

³¹ The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Second Reading Romans 3:19-28 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: The letter to the Roman churches is most assuredly penned by Paul himself. It is thick with Paul’s theology, intended to bring the congregations Paul did not start up to speed on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰ For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

²¹ But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶ it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

Gospel John 8:31-36 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: Jesus had been teaching in the temple, and his words stopped a crowd from stoning a woman accused of adultery. Many Jewish people had begun to listen to him. Now he addresses these new disciples.

³¹ Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³ They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵ The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶ So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.